Eating Canned Food

Eating canned food every day may raise the levels of the compound bisphenol A (BPA) in a person’s urine more than previously suspected, a new study suggests.

People who ate a serving of canned soup every day for five days had BPA levels of 20.8 micrograms per liter of urine, whereas people who instead ate fresh soup had levels of 1.1 micrograms per liter, a 1,221 percent jump.

The levels of BPA seen in the study participants “are among the most extreme reported in a nonoccupational setting,” Michels said. “We are concerned about the influence of [hormone-disrupting] chemicals on health in general, and BPA is one of them.”

The study is published online in the Journal of the American Medical Association.